Brett V. Benson and Brett J. Goldstein
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming indispensable to national security decision-making. Militaries around the world already depend on AI models to sift through satellite imagery, assess adversaries’ capabilities, and generate recommendations for when, where, and how force should be deployed. As these systems advance, they promise to reshape how states respond to threats. But advanced AI platforms also threaten to undermine deterrence, which has long provided the overall basis for U.S. security strategy.
Effective deterrence depends on a country being credibly able and willing to impose unacceptable harm on an adversary. AI strengthens some of the foundations of that credibility. Better intelligence, faster assessments, and more consistent decision-making can reinforce deterrence by more clearly communicating to adversaries a country’s defense capabilities as well as its apparent resolve to use them. Yet adversaries can also exploit AI to undermine these goals: they can poison the training data of models on which countries rely, thereby altering their output, or launch AI-enabled influence operations to sway the behavior of key officials. In a high-stakes crisis, such manipulation could limit a state’s ability to maintain credible deterrence and distort or even paralyze its leaders’ decision-making.
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